Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic

Ryan Szpiech

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 2013

Conversion and Narrative

Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic

Ryan Szpiech

In the series The Middle Ages Series

https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812207613

Overview
Contents

About this book

Szpiech draws on medieval Christian, Jewish, and Muslim polemics to investigate the role of narrative in the representation of conversion. By investigating conversion not as individual experience but as expression of communal visions of history, he shows how the narratives dramatize the conflict of ideas in disputational writing.

Author / Editor information

Ryan Szpiech teaches Spanish literature and Jewish studies at the University of Michigan.

Reviews

"This impressive book bridges the fields of religious studies and comparative literature in order to produce close and sophisticated readings of conversion narratives from the later Middle Ages across a broad array of languages (Latin, Castilian/Catalan, Arabic, and Hebrew). Very few scholars can move so gracefully among these languages and areas of scholarship while offering insights from the minutiae of philological analysis to high literary theory, reflections on the nature of religion, and notions of the self."—Jonathan Decter, Brandeis University

"A remarkably learned, ambitious, and important study. Conversion and Narrative will make a signal contribution to medieval studies in general, but more particularly to literary studies, intellectual history, and religious studies."—Thomas E. Burman, University of Tennessee

"This wide-ranging, erudite study brings a welcome new perspective to the subject of medieval interfaith polemics. . . . Szpiech's impressive analytical and linguistic skills have allowed him to produce a work of singular value, which will undoubtedly open up new lines of research for the future."—Catholic Historical Review

"In this book Ryan Szpiech has brought us a cogently argued, rigorously researched, and thoughtfully constructed theory of conversion narrative in the Middle Ages. His overall argument is compellingly simple: individual narratives of conversion are as much about the histories of religions as they are about the histories of individuals. . . . Szpiech demonstrates this thesis in a series of rigorous, close readings of conversion narratives written by Jews, Christians, and Muslims in an impressive range of languages."—Speculum

"Szpiech's insightful reading of a variety of conversion narratives produced within the Abrahamic religions between the ninth and the sixteenth century has produced this densely textured and important book which launches the study of conversion into new territory."—The Medieval Review

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Note on Names, Titles, Citations, and Transliteration Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Introduction Conversion and History Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1. From Peripety to Prose Tracing the Pauline and Augustinian Paradigms Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	30
Chapter 2. Alterity and Auctoritas Reason and the Twelfth-Century Expansion of Authority Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
Chapter 3. In the Shadow of the Khazars Narrating Conversion to Judaism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	92
Chapter 4. A War of Words Translating Authority in Thirteenth-Century Polemic Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
Chapter 5. The Jargon of Authenticity Abner of Burgos/Alfonso of Valladolid and the Paradox of Testimony Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
Chapter 6. The Supersessionist Imperative Islam and the Historical Drama of Revelation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	174
Conclusion Polemic as Narrative Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	309

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 328
Keywords: Literature; Religion; Medieval and Renaissance Studies; Literature; Cultural Studies; Religious Studies

eBook

Published: October 29, 2012
ISBN: 9780812207613